The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 13 - The Boot & Wares, The Southern Plains, and the Ring of Gargoyles

"The Bleak" (in this case, using the term to mean the remains of the Barthic Empire that have been attacked and absorbed by "The Bleak," folks in Grunce use the word to mean roughly eighteen different things at the same time) is the large scale corpse of a once thriving empire built upon the back of an even more Ancient empire whose technology once dominated the world even beyond the late . Though the spread of The Bleak took decades, that was relatively abrupt for an empire stretching back two millennia. Even a hundred years into Bleak's spread, several of the great Houses and Cities attempted to hold fast, gathering up their people and their treasure into a open air grave. 

Now those many, many last stands are abandoned or their new residents no longer remember what it was like to be human. Strange misshapen things wandering through halls full of gold and silk crying out in a voice of a language that no sane throat could make. 

For those brave enough to travel far past the light of Grunce or the relatively protected towns near the Gray Channel, there are riches to be had. 

If you survive.

And if you can find a buyer.   

This is where the expedition shops come into play: selling many vital goods to adventurers while also acting as a primary buyer for unearthed relics and treasures (both tending to be tangled up into the same contract). 

The "shallow" edges of The Bleak are largely plucked clean. One must dive deep to get true treasures. Spending weeks or months past the new boundary of civilization, though, comes at a price. Even for those who do not fear Encroachment upon their own skin must know that each and every crossbow bolt will fly true. Adventurers become fiercely loyal to their home shop: trusting their very lives to the wares inside. Likewise, shops become loyal to their customers. Without the relics, the shops could not afford to stay open. 

The Boot & Wares is one of the oldest of the shops. In the early days of Grunce, when it was essentially a home for the families that worked under the auspices of House Grunkheart, it was an eel pie restaurant that doubled as a cheap inn. After the Five Families came together and made Grunce into the Last Great City on the edge of The Bleak, The Boot & Wares went through several iterations. Selling food. Selling passage. Selling off goods for people fleeing. 

One hundred years ago, Imari Denish won The Boot & Wares in a card game. At the time, it was used to mostly shuffle debt around for families that had long tried to flee Barthus but had become stuck and left behind with years of collateral stockpiled into a madcap pawn shop. Denish, who was old by elf standards, saw the potential for a new type of business and gave many of the families tied to generational debt a choice: go back into The Bleak and bring stuff out. Each relic bought back a piece of the family legacy. 

Most did not survive. Some did. Denish sold off relics and the remnants of now gone families and brought in enough money to start shipping equipment and goods from the Free Merchants and the Pearl craftsfolk. 

Other businesses grew up using the same model. Some did it better. Most did it worse. Denish is not always an easy elf to work with, but he has his charms. A cottage industry he created - feeding off those desperate or foolhardy enough to brave diving into The Bleak - has somewhat left him behind and if you asked him he would tell you that he is fine with it. In reality, the old elf has a few tricks left up his sleeve. 

There are rumors that Imari Denish, hundreds of years ago, was a professional killer for several generations of some of the most powerful Barthic families, that he held out for decades in The Bleak until his old masters were too thin and too poor to retain him. If the Encroachment ever struck him, he has hid it well. 

 

Boot & Wares is an old shop. The shop owner, one Imari Denish, an elf old by elf standards, has only owned it for a bit [Shop name and own generated using tables from ShadowDark (ShD)]. Denish, an established but childish proprietor, won it in a game of cards around a decade back. His only goal is to find pleasure in his remaining years, Rumor has it he was an assassin some years back and fled some job deep in The Bleak [details generated, in part, by Universal NPC Emulator (UNE)].

The B&W has an item that can be valuable for long term survival in The Everburning Forest: dragonsilk. Clothing made from it can protect the wear from heat and smoke (in game terms, all saves and attempts to avoid damage from those sources will be done at advantage, on a fumble the silk will rip. Roll 1d6, if you roll under the number of rips, the silk is too compromised to continue working). [SoloDark (SoD): "Is there something in Grunce the 4 heroes can use to stave off heat damage?" at disadvantage and got 13 + 14 so "Yes, but..." there is some catch to obtaining it and it won't work forever] 

["Is Denish willing to sell the dragonsilk to new customers?" SoD 3 "No, but..." "What does he want to part with it?" SoD 97 Destroy 30 Lead + 48 Evolve 81 Path] He won't want to sell it, but he will trade it for a task. One involving taking down someone who is leading and whose downfall will open up paths to return The Boot & Ware back to better business. 

"I want you to break the balls of old Talbot Galfreet!" The old elf, white haired and wrinkled, cackled out this ludicrous phrase like a small, petulant child. 

It was Cal Grunkheart's aunt Moreena, current Lady of Grunkheart, who put them on the search to find The Boot & Wares, a large crumbling barn of a building that is either fairly empty or pretty full depending on how you looked at it. Fairly empty for a warehouse meant to be stocking delvers into The Bleak with all the best gear and equipment. Pretty full for a place in Grunce's slums that looks like it should have fallen over several years ago. 

As they asked around to find out where The Boot & Wares or its proprietor, Imari Denish, might be located, the people who answered did so from somewhere between awe and irritation. Some refused to talk about it. Most just broadly gestured to someplace roughly "over there." 

It was late at night before Rance found someone willing to answer. A bartender in the middle of the slums who seemed to be on good terms with Denish and the elf's customers. "Oh, you want 'Old Denish, well...that way, go down...past Kardent's old Keep...up the graveyard lane past the church..." and then proceeded to list another dozen streets and half dozen landmarks. "Can't miss it!" 

To Rance's credit, he did not. He came to a building around a third the size of a city block that looked like it had been set on fire once or twice with a large red door that was probably painted around the time that Rance was born and he and Cal knocked. Despite the time of night, a surly old man, human old, brought them and soon enough they met Denish himself. 

To call him "Old Denish" is to put a lot of weight on the word "Old". Most travelers who meet an "old elf" might be shocked to see a centuries old person who still had smooth skin and bright hair. Denish would have been old when the Barthic Empire fell. Now he was the kind of old that you could use to frighten youth. 

Here was a man who had been alive before the entire Grunkheart family took its name from the small fishing village of Grunce's Hearth and might, maybe, be alive after the last Grunkheart passes from the earth (especially in light of neither Cal nor Gryff having any children, yet). Except "Old Denish" still acts a bit like an excitable child. 

"Excuse me, what?" asks Cal, after a few good moments of confused silence. 

Even a relative newcomer like Rance knows of Galfreet: the walking smile who owns The Tinman's Whistle. The biggest expedition shop in Grunce and one of the few that looks like a proper, respectable place to shop (others consider it poor taste to look so friendly).

This all started as Rance asked a simple question, "What can we do to survive the potential dangers of the Everburning Forest?" and the answer, in the books, was largely, "Do not go." A couple of the books did give some possible solutions, and of the relatively few answers the one that seemed to be most possibly helpful was dragonsilk (neither silk nor made from dragons, being made from the crushed larva of fire beetles and treated in a many step process). The second question, "Where do we get dragonsilk," was both simpler and harder. It is not that it is rare, per se, it is simply rarely in demand. When you have thousands of square miles of landscape ripe for the plucking, there is little cause to go to portions of the landscape that happen to be on fire. 

One of the Keepers, though, had a cousin whose uncle owed some debts and so forth and so on and the gist being that Imari Denish had taken three large reams of dragonsilk as payment a couple of years back. 

Once Cal asked about the dragonsilk, Denish had cackled for a few seconds before saying the above ludicrous phrase, but the story he told them was not ludicrous at all. 

"Galfreet is in the pocket of House Marr, and they have been very naughty children." It turns out that Marr's never-ending fight against the Free Merchants has turned violent only its unsure if the Free Merchants even realize they are in the early days of a war. The Merchants tend to run the expedition shops. Marr wants to cement that trade so has been making sure a few bad transactions have slipped through, a few unlucky accidents. Nothing too egregious. 

Until Frond Neuman's Sand Divers left Grunce a couple of weeks ago, going to Mist Lake in the center of Sofron Desert. They never made it. Sometimes trade expeditions do not, though the border towns rely heavily on them for supplies. It is dangerous to go into The Bleak. That is why the pay is so good. 

Only, Denish has heard that Neuman was waylaid by a gang of thugs employed by Marr through the management of Galfreet. The very shop that had supplied the mission and so knew exactly what path they would take was able to lay a trap and then steal back most of the valuable supplies from the corpses. Besides, Mist Lake has been hoarding relics and refusing to make any sort of deal with Talbot Galfreet. If he can cut off supplies to them, it gives him another revenue stream. 

"Marr plans to take this town. Not as the elected leader of the Great Houses but as his own personal playing field. And he plans to crush the Free Merchants and claim sovereign power over expeditions. He has decided that killing his own subjects is an ok path to his rise. If we can get proof that Talbot is helping, then we can turn the tide before sets his sights on my place," gesturing around to the various odds and ends and rubble in the building. "Do me that favor, and the dragonsilk is yours and I'll toss in a discount on your other goods." [1]

"Do you want us to bring back the proof here so you can use it for blackmail?" Cal asks. 

"No, share it with everyone. Better there are riots in the street as people know the truth rather than this city let the enemy in to feed off its corpse for any longer." [2]

The caravan was lost around at around 4 hexes travel away from Grunce (1 day for adventurers moving lightly, at least twice that long for those actually on the caravan). [Note, this was determined by rolling 8 dice and then keeping only those 3+]. 

It tracked west across the South Barthic plains to the River Orneth and then headed south. The first section is "plains" and then the remaining three are "river" [using ShadowDark hex mapping rules]. The road will run along the river with the plains out to either side. In the distance, the Caux Mountains will be visible.  There are no places of interest on this route. A few old bridges from when roads were more plentiful and a few fording spots. Everything else is just ruins of homesteads long gone. 

If you dug deep enough into the tall grass, you would find broken plows and bricks. Two generations before Jonias Grunkheart and his father built up the family name, the Grunkhearts were prone to less savory money making schemes. Elias, the third Lord Grunkheart, Jonias's Great-Uncle, brought in a lot of people to the South Plains in a scheme to strand them and force them into a form on indentured servitude by having them farm land not suited for any profitable agriculture. The farms would fail and Elias would then enlist the destitute farmhands into service to carry out military campaigns or other thuggish activities. It was his nephew, Basil, that actually turned the Grunkhearts around after a brief familial war. Basil and his son, Jonias, reworked the farmland into grazing pasture and moved many farmers into fishing and boating as a prime livelihood [(SoloDark) 90 Mislead 57 Failure + 67 Secure 09 Trial]. 

The grass here has altered here in the many years of Encroachment. The color is tinges towards deep azure. The blue grass is smooth and if pressed hard reshapes slightly at the touch, like one is touching some sort of hardened gel or quicksilver. Heavy, it barely moves in the wind that flows over the space. Instead, the air moving through the oddly smooth grass makes strange dissonant tones that might sound like a sigh or a gentle humming. During particularly strong breezes, it takes on the sound of a choir warming up. During storms, it can sound like a shriek before the grass deforms and has to be rebuilt. Slowly springing back into its semi-liquid shape. [(Knave) Place Traits 88 (Texture --> 66 Quicksilver) + Color 11 Azure + Place Traits 11 Singing]

The morning is largely uneventful. A few small animals and occasional traveler spotted. Just the long miles of road and river and strange singing blue grass [Doug's Note: I blame the oracles for this, pun not intended but now canon]. After a restful lunch, the team will spot a herd of 10 wild horses. At least, what was once horses. The Encroachment has altered the structures of the beasts. They are of a similar substance as the strange hard liquid grass. Their outer skin a more translucent shade - blues and purples and reds - with inner bones and organs slightly visible underneath. Their manes flex and flow even when there is no wind. In the grass, they can stand still and so thoroughly match the colors of the sky and land around them as to be practically invisible. Up close, they can attack with their hooves or by shooting off ooze-spines from their mane. 

Southern Plains Horses 

(built using Horses + ShadowDark's creature generator). 

AC13. HP13. Attack 1 ooze (+3 1d8) or 1 hooves (+3 1d6). MV Double Near. S+3 D+1 C+2 I-3 W+1 R-2 AL N LV 3

Unfortunately, the horse-like things are extremely hostile to others [rolled double 1s on reaction roll and "What are they doing" was a "nesting" so this is a group with young, half of their number are young]. Though on the other side of the river, they will notice the PCs and some will start crossing the river [rolled a 17 vs DC15 DEX check] and be across in two rounds]. There are 2 males who will carry out the attack while the mothers stay back.

The four travelers have been riding for hours and are feeling sore for their effort, being not used to any sort of horse-bound activity. They grew up poor and got really used to long hikes but time is enough of the essence here that they need to move a bit quicker than they could on foot. 

They are also feeling the strain of being out in the Bleak after having more first hand experience of its impact, its...Encroachment. Inar was the first to note the strange texture of the grass, and still has not really come to grips with the fact that if they were to spend enough time out in the Bleak, the same shift might happen to him. 

"Cal says this is the Shallows, Gale, the Encroachment here is very small," says Grusk. The half-orc has shown no outward sign of being disturbed by the fact that chances are, on some minute level, the Bleak has already changed some slight portion of himself. Cal Grunkheart assured them it was very unlikely they would ever have any effects from it. The Bleak is extremely "shallow" here and some folks spend most of their times past the walls with little to no impact. "As long," Cal said, "as they don't have kids. Then it gets...odd." 

"It does not have to be very big. I am not very big." 

"Well, Inar, you could use a makeover." Like Inar, Tom is on a smaller pony while Grusk and Rance are riding on horses. These are Bleak-stock. They are chosen for good breeding and trainability and raised, like a lot of the agricultural stock which keeps Grunce running, on farm islands out in the Channel. Fixed so they can not get pregnant and then brought to The Bleak where they spend the rest of their days. Good Bleak-stock is hard to find and the quality of these is pretty exceptional. Some large favors were called and losing these horses would likely earn them the ire of some relatively rich people.

The four of them had been following a map given to them by Denish. How he got it, they do not know. It shows the route from this past delivery to Mist Lake. There are no real roads between the various Bordertowns. Caravans take a variety of routes and switch them up regularly in order to avoid any sort of bandits, rivals, or strange cults. Navigators get paid big to map out safe routes. Only, if the navigators are in on the swindle, as happened here, they can lead the group right into a trap. 

Denish said that some of the goods that should have been on the caravan re-entered the Grunce blackmarket only a few days after the caravan left, suggesting that it was only a day or two out at the most. Why attack so close to Grunce? Because if you go a few more miles you have to traverse a fairly Deep section of The Bleak and it does not take a lot of superstition for house retainers to worry about that fact. 

Some caravaners get paid good money to trek through the Deep: giving up having children. Giving up their own humanity if they do it for long enough. A couple of small shanty towns near Grunce take care of the old-timers who have been hit too hard by Encroachment. 

They ride in silence for several more miles until they final come across a break in the monotony. A herd of horses. Or at least, things in the rough shape of horses on the other side of the river. The skin on these creatures ripples and flows in strange ways, showing bones and organs in odd swirling glances. The color is a deeper shade of the grass overall, though some lean a bit more red or a bit more green. 

"I guess you are what you eat," quips Tom as Inar gasps and breathes heavily in the rear, sounding like he might be fighting the urge to vomit. 

"Let's not eat those, then," answers Rance. Grusks laughs. Inar breaks down into a coughing fit and looks like is about to fall from his pony's saddle.

Unfortunately, two of the larger horse-things start rearing and loudly snorting. "Ah, I think they don't like our horses," Rance notes. Sure enough, the aggressors start plowing into the water and quickly crossing. 

"Grusk, we cannot kill them. They might be the only members of their species," says Tom despite notching his arrows. 

"Then let us put some space between us. Uffolt, can you buy us time?" 

Rance pulls out his Wand of Webs and casts it on the shore right as the two horse-things walk out. The spell gathers around them in white, glowing strands before hardening into a gray materials. The creatures buck hard against this but are trapped, for now. The group is able to make an escape. [3]

A ring of stones the characters stop at to rest for the night turns out to be 8 gargoyles. The gargoyles are currently sleeping but will be aware of the adventurers whom they will consider interesting curiosities.  Rather than attack, they will keep something of a guard on the party and eventually will fully wake up and try chatting. They are bored and mostly wanting company. [(SoD) Do they get any regular visitors? 2 No] [(SoD) What do they want? 52 Awaken 65 Control + 56 Break 85 Truth... they want to rule this chunk of The Bleak but they need the real leader to be destroyed.] [(SoD) Is there a more powerful creature that the gargoyles fear? 18 Yes.] [(SoD) Will the gargoyles be able to help the adventurers find the destroyed caravan site? 16 Yes]. 

The creature the gargoyles fear is an ancient cyclops. What does the cyclops want? We will find that in play... 

[Are the gargoyles impacted by the Bleak? 10 --> Twist! 56 Break 37 Wisdom + 83 Ascend 52 Sorcery. They are goofy, silly acting gargoyles are who prone to casting random spells on accident.] 

[Doug's Note: This is the adventure that never ends...it goes on and on my friends...]

Note: Gargoyle stats are on page 216. Their WIS is adjusted to -2 but their Charisma to +2.

Unsurprisingly, it is Tom who first notices that the strange stones around them are moving. Seeing the rocks unfold into wings he decides to skip any attempt at stealth or decorum and screams, "GARGOYLES!" Sure enough, the eight stones the party had camped out in are all moving into large, 7' living statues. 

Grusk is up in a flash and Bloodlust is brought forward. Inar is slower to waken but is somewhere between grabbing his war hammer and hiding deeper into his sleeping bag. Rance wakes up and casts light on the dying campfire, fully illuminating the scene in harsh colors. [4]

The armor is in a pile nearby. The group got too used to the silence. Once they found the bridge over Orneth that would allow them to keep following the caravan they had decided to try and get a full rest so they could push it the next day to hopefully find the attack site and then get back to Grunce in quick time. It is a mistake they are not likely to make, again. Only Tom has kept his leathers on. A goblin does not relax easily. 

"I knew we should have just kept riding," Inar says. Tom notes the halfling is trying, and failing, to quietly put his armor on to the side. 

"The first one who comes closer, I break into tiny pebbles," Grusk, even unarmored is slowly spinning in place trying to keep an eye on as many of the gargoyles as possible. 

"Now. Now," says one of the largest of the creatures. "No need for all that. We were keeping an eye on you while you were eating and everything!" 

"Excuse me?" says Rance, looking to his friends. 

The smallest of the gargoyles, still larger than Grusk, breaks into a large, toothy smile and says in a quiet, almost squeaky voice, "You guys got any more wine. Pffrak never shares any wine."

MECHANICAL NOTES

1. Using adventure tags from Scarlet Heroes (ScH), got an urban adventure tag of "Stolen Authority" and a Wilderness Adventure Tag of "Massacre Site". Combining elements of those two we have a story of the Free Merchants being targeted by an increasingly power hungry Marr and there being a place in the wilderness with a mass grave. The Free Merchants do not yet know that Marr is doing this and if they did, it would spell a lot of trouble. 
2. (SoD) Does Denish want to expose Marr/Galfreet openly? 16 --> Yes.
3. Casting roll is a 13+4 = 17. The two horse things rolled a 14 and a 10. They are trapped. One will bring free in 3 rounds and the other in the 4th. Rolling a DC9 to check for horse riding (these have been established as good quality horses used to the Bleak) all make their roll. These horse things might still be on the way back but for now they managed to get away without bloodshed. 
4. 16 + 4 = 20. So a solid cast and fairly bright.

DOUG's NOTES

After the super busy couple of weeks, I had prepped about 2/3s of this post (though the original version was a lot more abrupt) and then proceeded to get super-ill for most of the next week. It worked out ok because as I went through cold meds and fevers and all that I had some time to mentally parse some of the world and give it some thought. Essentially, the "this game is be my dungeon crawl story and eschew story" is well and dead and instead it's going to be a LOT more story and goofy NPCs and such (as well as some dungeon crawls, point crawls, and all the classics). 

On one hand, this gives me the freedom to just go all out and make the story very Doug where there will be essentially no "just baddies" and the world will be weird and have a lot of RP opportunities and weird fiction influences. On the other, it has one strangely unintended impact: I have to decide what to do with my entire Blood Hands storyline now. Though the Dark and the Bleak were kind of the same story, there was the difference that BH was all about the social interactions while B+P was all about the dungeon delving and such. By folding both elements into this one there is little reason to keep up the original version of The Bloody Hands. I have an idea on that but I am essentially going to take the best parts of both of those and pull them into this story and probably make that story much more as written on the tin: not a corrupting force but a war between the outside and inside. Drop some of the drug angles and focus more on fighting the monsters trying to invade the veil. We'll see. 

For this campaign, expect the elements of "world lore" + "gm mode" + "player mode" to continue, though.